CSBG Archive

A Year of Cool Comic Book Moments – Day 275

Here is the latest cool comic book moment in our year-long look at one cool comic book moment a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here‘s the archive of the moments posted so far!

Here is a cool moment from Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith’s series, Fell…

The concept behind Fell is that Detective Richard Fell has been transferred to Snowtown. Snowtown is basically the worst inner city imaginable – imagine Hill Street, but 10 times worse.

His only guide on this journey is Mayko, a bartender that only Fell can see and hear (okay, so can everyone else, as she owns a bar – but bear with me here!). In the first issue, Mayko actually BRANDS Fell with a “protective symbol.”

In any event, he forgives her for the branding and they eventually become good friends.

In Fell #6, they’re spending Fell’s day off together, and Fell is naturally bemoaning how messed up his life (and the city) is.

He gets roped into checking out a domestic disturbance, and Mayko comes along – the problem is a mother is trying to get to her daughter, who is being held by her father. The woman is a drug addict who had lost custody of the child. Well, the daughter is clearly sick, but while the father says she is diabetic and he is giving her insulin shots, Fell knows he is lying, so Fell pays a neighborhood kid to throw some rocks through the man’s windows to give Fell the chance to sneak in and free the daughter.

Then this follows…

As Ellis notes in the back of the book, this story is based on an actual incident where a parent was doing exactly that with their child.

In any event, “the” moment is definitely the photo, where we see how Fell is able to literally rise above the shit he is surrounded.

@dmor: Yes. He used a junky to give birth to a child so he could live on the walfare. He injected his daughter with his own crap to “make her his own” (like it said in the pages featured above) and by creating a situation in which he’s the only one capable of taking care of the sick girl, she remained in his custody.

There are so many cool moments in the series. My favorite story is the one with the suicide bomber in the old lady’s store. Also, everytime the Nixon masked nun shows up – it’s a cool moment.

stealthwise

I actually had a pretty big problem with this issue, being a diabetic myself. When Fell says he was lying because “diabetics get their shots in the stomach”, I did a spit-take. SOME do, many do, as a matter of fact, but I took mine in the upper arm my entire life. The girl’s injection sites were on the underside of her forearm, and they were hideously scarred. THAT’S what should have set Fell off, not the fact that it was on her arm at all.

Cheeris

Yeah… I have little idea about diabetic injections really and I thought it strange that Fell picked up on the stomach/arm thing. Doesn’t really make sense other than a story-telling shortcut but then it could have been better told.

@kanak: I had the same problem too… I’m not a native english speaker and wsn’t really familiar with the word “turds”… I first thought it was another word for “drugs” or something similar, but after looking it up it really means he was injecting the girl his own defecation. This is why Mayko comments about the smell as well.

I don’t know why but after getting the meaning I feel kind of nauseous… I keep on thinking what kind of crazy fuck would do that to a human being (or any living thing) and feel I’m about to puke. Man, this is based on actual facts!

Panji Sudoyo

I’ve always wondered: “Where does Warren Ellis get all his sick, sick ideas from?”
Then i realized that all he had to do was look at the world.
We do live in sick times, i’m afraid.
Yeah, this series is awesome. I bought the first TPB and it blew me away. Won’t hold my breath waiting for the second one, though. Ellis is too busy with Astonishing X-men, his Ultimates stuff and other Marvel mainstream works, when he should really just be concetrating on this (I know, i know..i understand his reasons..one has to pay the bills).
He should also work on making another Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E series.

Brian Cronin

nikolai

i realize it may just be early on the series, as i’m only one volume deep, but it seems very reasonable. she owns a bar…that no ones ever been in. the only time she had dialogue with anyone other than fell was when she talked to the young girl (which could easily be passed off as fell’s imagination). and chet yell’s that he’s going to “kill you and your bitch” when he hears the commotion upstairs…but then as he turns the corner says, “whoa, detective, i didn’t know…) sounds to me like he could have thought it was someone else, especially since his ex threatened to bring he brothers over again. i know it’s not going to end up being the case, but i’d like to believe it…it just feels right to me. i’d like to see the two photos of mayko playing a large part in the revelation of what fell is keeping hidden and why he isn’t welcomed on the other side of the bridge anymore.